How do we drive in the world?
Right or Left? It is a more difficult question that it seems to be.
Italian people, like all the other European citizens, usually drive on the right and when we see an English car, we are always very surprised and curious about it, about how it works and how it could be so odd to works in that way.
In the realy not only English people have this “strange” habit and many other countries “go in the same way”.
How can we explain this difference?
In the Middle Ageg, people usually walked on the left side of the road because of a typical habit of knives, who must leave the right hand free in order to use swords and other similar objects to fight against the enemies. The left became the “aristocratic side”, indeed the right , the “villan” one. According to the legend, it was due to Robespierre, a supporter of revolution, who started to spread the drive on the right, which was the side of common folk. Other theories say that it depend on Napoleon, who was left-handed person. In the reality, right or left were not so different, if we consider the speed of the means of transport typical of that period, like: horses and carriages.
When the cars started to run through the streets, it became important to set precise rules and the most part of industrialized countries chose the right as the way to go. The Great Britain disagreed with the decision and it establish this rule also for all its colonies, except for the USA, who accepted the left direction also as a form of rebellion against the colonists. The 1/3 of the drivers in the world still choose the left, like: South Africa and Kenya, Australia and New Zealand, Nepal and India and Japan, as it is shown in the map.